Friday, November 27, 2009

I ran the Turkey Trot 5 mile yesterday, which was held at Harper College in Palatine. The course consisted of 2.5 loops on the circle drive around the campus. My younger sister, Cindy, also signed up for the race. She has been running quite a few 5k races recently, and this was going to be her longest race to date.

Considering all the long and slow running I've been doing this year, I didn't have too high of expectations. I figured I'd be coming in around 45-50 minutes. The weather wasn't very ideal with upper 30's temps, light rain (at least for the first part of the race), and a blustery wind.

I had no concept of pacing so my splits were kinda all over the place, but I did better than expected with a finish time of 45:30. My splits were 8:57, 8:58, 9:28 (yikes), 9:28 (double yikes), and then 8:38 (redemption!). I forgot how uncomfortable the 5mi/8k/10k distance is -- it's short enough that I have to run pretty fast but it's for nearly a whole dang hour. Whew! I had some "ugh, dang, I'm suffering!" moments there...

Cindy had a great race and came in under an hour in spite of enduring the blustery conditions and a lingering chest cold. I'm so proud of her!! It was definitely a great way to start off Thanksgiving Day. :-)